When an unidentified “someone” coughs up 1.6m bucks to buy 15,000 puts on a bondmarket collapse, it might be time to sit up and wake up. The puts suggest a level not hit since mid 2009. If the guy’s right, his put will be worth $27m.
When a Bric like Brazil’s graph forecast dives from +0.5% to -3.0% in 9 months flat, it may be time to sit up, wake up, and take some frigging notice. Ditto when the Canadian dollar hits an eleven year low against the $US.
When the Kansas City Fed’s manufacturing index slumps from plus 10 to minus 15 year on year in August, it may be time to take part in that so-last-year iced water bucket over the head shtick.
When Standard & Poors cuts the Ukraine’s credit rating from C/C (the C is for crap) to ‘selective default’ – above the B/B confirmation given to Zambia and Republic of Congo – maybe the moment has arrived to worry about socio-economic meltdown between the Russian and US/EU axes of idiocy.
When Japanese QE (as in coo-eee, anyone home in there?) nutter Shinzo Abe vows to expand by 20% a market already 60% dependent on BoJ junk sprees, you should really be thinking hard about contemporary economics being off with the fairies in the funny farm.
When – despite billions of Yuan and threats of beheading being chucked in to persuade local market traders to support Chinese stock indexes – they still keep slithering towards the sewer, it is almost certainly time to get down to the physician in search of medication. And on hearing that an estimated $141.7 billion left China in August 2015 (compared to $77.3 billion arriving in February 2014) it is time to take everything and anything the gp will give you.
But when – because VW fiddled its diesel pollution figures (as every other carmaker known to Man does) the world’s most respected carmaker gets cut from the Bank of France offer list because the VW default probability has risen by18% – well….then you know it’s not you: the human race has gone completely troppo – it just didn’t bother to invite you along for the ride.
ΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓΓ
With every year that passes (egged on this year by the above facts) I am increasingly convinced that Homo sapiens is not evolving at all. If anything, our name was wrong in the first place: we are, in reality, Homo f**kwit. The “ascent” of man postulated by Jacob Bronowski is and always was bollocks. If we ever do evolve (a remote possibility in the light of technological own-goals) then I suspect our ever-vigilant amino acids will detect the need to give us smaller brains and more prehensile limbs – if only to rid us of the toxicity produced by processed foods, alcohol and other mind-altering inventions of the over-sized cerebrum that gives all of us back pain, and all kinds of other problems.
Man the intelligent tool-making twat was a mistake. Back up in the trees with access only to natural things, we might once more revert to the harmless fruit-and-nut-cases we used to be.
*Major hat-tip to kf for tonight’s market data
The Slog 